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ICANN's Cozy Relationship With the US Must End, Says EU
alphadogg writes "The exclusive relationship of ICANN with the U.S. must end, said the European Union's digital agenda chief on Wednesday. California-based ICANN is responsible for the assignment of top-level domains and has a long-standing operating agreement with the U.S. However, following the revelations by Edward Snowden of widespread surveillance of the Internet by the National Security Agency, many countries have questioned the arrangement. The historical relationship, noted in ICANN's Affirmation of Commitments, is outdated and the governance of the Internet must become more global, said the E.U. Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes. Kroes was presenting the European Commission's new policy on Internet governance, which rejects any United Nations or governmental takeover of Internet governance and calls for a move to globalize ICANN."
I'm failing to understand the issue here. Anything ICANN does is essentially public. Any changes to domain IP addresses have to propagate out to everyone, so it's not like they could cause traffic to be arbitrarily rerouted, etc. Sounds like just another straw man attempt to get the ICANN out of the US.
Better known as 318230.
The U.S. invented the system. It wouldn't be any better regardless of which country or entity "controlled" it.
De-centralized DNS would be better.
The best way to stop spying is to not let any connections to foreign websites. Whilst i'm not one for great firewalls or suchlike (and as a brit i despise David Macaroon's internet filtering policy) maybe it's time to start filtering connections from certain countries. If the EU is so worked up about America controlling the internet (which it does) maybe it's time to set up a Euronet and filter connection to and from the US. Would it help keep the internet free? No. But the internet will never be free whilst it's run by a single country.
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
I don't see how making governance more globalized would have curtailed NSA surveillance.
I am though concerned about globalizing it - let alone having the UN have control. I would be afraid that countries like: Saudi Arabia, China, N. Korea, Iran, and every other backwards oppressive totalitarian regime out there would be doing what they can to REDUCE the innovation and freedom of the Internet. Although, Net Neutrality is a bit of a battle I am not so sure globalizing ICANN's role would get it through.
Yeah, as "transparent" as the EU and its swarms of diplomats and lobbyists. As "inclusive" as the UN, which is primarily composed of representatives of totalitarian regimes.
That's a smokescreen. Of course, European governments want to get their grubby hands on Internet functions and governance.
How is one related to the other? No matter what you think of NSA surveillance (and European nations seemed to like it as long as it was hush-hush), you can hardly accuse the US of not having maintained the Internet as a "fast engine for innovation".
no.
I've given up on the internet. Anyone with any sense must consider the internet and its governing structures openly hostile. It doesn't matter which entity controls ICANN: Private or public, multinational or unilateral. They're all trying to push their own agendas. The only hope for a better network is decentralization, and not just politically: The infrastructure itself and the services on top must be decentralized. It is not a matter of who controls ICANN. The problem is that ICANN needs to exist in the first place.
As in "No, we're not going to let the Eurocrats get their sticky fingers on ICANN."
So we get that little bonus.
We inveted your language. We get that little bonus.
France invented your democratic process. They get that little bonus.
Scotland invented the TV, they get that little bonus.
Oh, no, you're merkins, therefore American Exceptionalism To The RESCUE!!!!
The Internet is on a natural course to balkanization. The sooner ICANN gets deposed and a rival international body gets set up the better.
Right now, everyone is in an uproar over Net Neutrality, how (at the moment) we don't have it, and how the few big ISPs are going to ruin the Internet, turning it into another version of the Walled Gardens of the pre-Internet era. However we, once again, are just being distracted by this from the real threat: the rest of the world. We here in the U.S. need to remember: We're just a single-digit percentage of the world's total population, yet we've got (at the moment, anyway) an inordinate amount of power of the shape and direction of the Internet as a whole. In a moment of lucidity, one must ask the oneself: How long can this go on? It's not just possible, but probable, that the rest of the world will eventually have a say in the shape and nature of the Internet as a whole. What will it look like in 20 years? I personally don't think that the U.N. is the body that should have control over the course and form of the Internet any more than I think that the Olympics are just about athletic competition and not politics -- a comparison I'm making on purpose because that's what the Olympics are about: politics, and having the United Nations in control of the Internet would turn the Internet into just another political tool. I do not have the vision to know who (or what) should shape the future of the Internet, but I do recognize what a critical time in the Internet's history this moment in time is.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Seriously....
.amazon didn't get approval.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/amazon-rejected-as-domain-name-after-south-american-objections/
We're just a single-digit percentage of the world's total population, yet we've got (at the moment, anyway) an inordinate amount of power of the shape and direction of the Internet as a whole.
I think the power of ICANN and the US is rather greatly overstated when it comes to the internet.
I personally don't think that the U.N. is the body that should have control over the course and form of the Internet
Ok, fair enough. Who should then? I hear this all the time how people dislike the UN for various reasons that they always seem unable to articulate but honestly I can't think of any other body better positioned to play quasi-neutral arbiter. Of course politics are going to play a role - doesn't matter who ultimately is the controlling body. If you don't like the UN filling this role then who else do you propose?
The headline should read:
ICANN's Cozy Relationship With the US Must End, Says ____________ [insert name of any country not spelled "United States of America" here]
Better known as 318230.
So the problem seems to be that ICANN is an american corporation, and thus subject to the laws of the US, and that in turn, could be used against foreign powers?
The solution then is to 'globalize' it? Where is it going to be 'globalized' to? Which country could it exist in where it would have immunity to any laws and act with impunity in regards to them?
When I see the complaints against it by China, Russia, the EU, and so on, they're always advocating more restrictions, protection of their interests. They want the ability to blacklist sites that talk about their politicians, that discuss unfavorable religions or religious rights, that cover alternative lifestyles such as gay or transgender, and so on. They want to do it without arbitration, automatically.
What they really are complaining about is that they don't have absolute control over it, and they want it. Everything else is just a pleasant lie or deliberate misdirection.
Let's be fair; the US has more than it's fair share of faults, but our definition of freedom is still incredibly wide reaching compared with the vast majority of countries in the world, and we're big enough to make it hard to push us around with political power alone. That's the big problem they're seeing. ... besides, use of the current DNS registry system is entirely voluntary. There's nothing to stop someone from coming up with their own, like the TOR network did. If it's better, people will use it over the current one. Though, I think they realize that any replacement that is more strictly controlled will never be considered 'better', so they need to subvert the current one.
The US "must" do this? I do not think that word means what you think it means.
I can see why the EU and/or UN would want the US to give up control over the ICANN contract, but every time this comes up, I have yet to see a single reason presented as to why the US would agree to do it.
Diplomacy involves the practical application of either the proverbial Carrot or Stick or Both. "Do this or I'll write further Official Letters demanding it" is not much of a stick, and it certainly isn't a carrot.
Icann is probably more global than any other group out there. It has about 2/3 of the nations involved. The CEO is lebanonese who naturalized to america. The top ppl of icann that makes decisions are from all over. Other than being based in USA, it is already global.
The stewardship the US has exercised has been far from perfect, and recent years have shown it to be even worse than previously believed. But for all that, even within the context of recent revelations, it has still proven considerably less-intolerable of a steward than any other proposal yet put forward.
For all the EU's talk of Internet freedom, most nations have moved to curtail it within their own borders, and their efforts have achieved considerably more support within their borders than the corresponding efforts of the US: not a good sign. The UN-based proposals, meanwhile, are almost universally fronted by foxes seeking employment as henhouse guards, and not only does the UN lack any provisions to exclude them from this kind of power, it considers this a feature, not a bug. Allowing a body like that control over communication simply is not sane: too many foxes will hold too much of the power too much of the time. And then there is the move by the BRIC nations to set up "their own Internet," which suffers the same problems as the UN proposal, only with the the foxes enshrined permanently at the top of the heap.
With these options, what's left? The US has shown that it cannot be trusted, but there are degrees of untrustworthiness, and while the publicly-known actions of the US are inexcusable, every other nation or group that has put forth a bid to succeed it openly intends to do far worse. The US is simply the best of a bad lot, and with no other lots coming down the pipeline, I see no other solution for now.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Cloud tied to geography, chinese walls between subsidiaries and parent corporations, criminal penalties for cooperating with foreign intelligence agencies - it's all going to happen. All of it.
By 2016, being a US-based IT corporation will make sales close to impossible.
What a careless comment. Many were terminated for much less. He's now a target of US regime.
Lots of words but no real indication of what they actually want. What do they want to do that ICANN won't? Are they trying to hijack *.com? Or create useless new *.moneygrab top level domains? If they actually think ICANN has anything to do with spying or censorship, they don't understand how the internet protocols work. China didn't need ICANN's permission to build the great firewall.
I fail to see how internet addressing and numbering is directly related to the NSA (and GCHQ, which Neelie Kroes fails to mention) spying on individuals. Also the argument of agility seems a bit off too. Once you start adding a multitude of (governments) stakeholders to any project, things tend to slow down not become more agile.
Here's a big blast of logic for you: what country invented the majority of the internet's protocols, hardware, and design? Domain registrations really don't have a whole lot to do with spying either and that's the majority of what ICANN handles. The W3C has more of an impact on the actual internet.
US invented the internet, we get that little bonus. It's like a unique wonder in Civ 5. This country gets the bonuses, end of story. If your country colonizes the moon or something, you get those benefits.
The inventor of the television: http://www.televisionheaven.co... http://www.televisionheaven.co... The world’s first programmable electronic computer Tommy Flowers, Flowers was born at 160 Abbot Road, Poplar in London’s East End on 22 December 1905, the son of a bricklayer. Thomas “Tommy” Harold Flowers, MBE (22 December 1905 – 28 October 1998) was a British engineer. During World War II, Flowers designed Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer, to help solve encrypted German messages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... World Wide Web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
So we get that little bonus. ...
We inveted your language. We get that little bonus.
France invented your democratic process. They get that little bonus.
Scotland invented the TV, they get that little bonus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Farnsworth
I think the mormon's invented the useful TV....
Well, partly. Much as I love Philo T. Farnsworth:
inventors.about.com/od/tstartinventions/a/Television.htm
But, actually, Scottland has a decent claim. From that universal reference source, Wikipedia (and if you don't like what they say, write something else!):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_television
"On March 25, 1925, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of televised silhouette images in motion, at Selfridge's Department Store in London.[7] AT&T's Bell Telephone Laboratories transmitted halftone still images of transparencies in May 1925. On June 13 of that year, Charles Francis Jenkins transmitted the silhouette image of a toy windmill in motion, over a distance of five miles from a naval radio station in Maryland to his laboratory in Washington, D.C., using a lensed disk scanner with a 48-line resolution.[8][9]
However, if television is defined as the live transmission of moving images with continuous tonal variation, Baird first achieved this privately on October 2, 1925. But strictly speaking, Baird had not yet achieved moving images for his scanner worked at only five images per second, below the threshold required to give the illusion of motion, usually defined as at least 12 images per second. By January, he had improved the scan rate to 12.5 images per second.[citation needed] Then on January 26, 1926 Baird gave what is widely recognized as being the world's first demonstration of a working television system, to members of the Royal Institution and a newspaper reporter from The Times, at his laboratory in 22 Frith Street, Soho, London.[10] Unlike later electronic systems with several hundred lines of resolution, Baird's vertically scanned image, using a scanning disk embedded with a double spiral of lenses, had only 30 lines, just enough to reproduce a recognizable human face.
In 1927, Baird transmitted a signal over 438 miles (705 km) of telephone line between London and Glasgow..."
Farnsworth's first demo was September 1927, by the way, so all of this precedes his public demo.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I've given up on the internet.
Posting "I've given up on the internet" on the internet wins today's oxymoron prize.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
We invented the internet, if it wasn't for DARPA and Al Gore, there would be no ICANN. Just like with GPS. If you don't like the US version, build your own.
Nevermind that Europe, while better on privacy rights, is far worse on freedom of speech rights. Technical measures can help with privacy but it is very hard to overcome freedom of speech restrictions with software ('m talking rights to, not the ability to. Ability means nothing if it lands you in jail or your speech is removed)
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Well the US standardise the first international network that we know as the internet, computer networks had been around in multitudes at the same time. So yes, well done, its very nice and we love the internet. However, the UK and CERN invented the WWW (yes invested because it wasnt a deterministic invention like the internet) and WWW is pretty much synonymous with domain names.
DNS needs to be redesigned. The internet can't exist in a neutral state having one organization with control over any critical part of the network. Distributed DNS seems to be the answer.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
... Victoria Nuland
If the EU and world want more say in what ICANN does, then start sending more money.
It is the US taxes payers that started the Internet and the ICANN, it is about time for the world to start paying too.
At least they appear to get it with regard to the UN; the US will never submit control of ICANN's many responsibilities to ITU or any other UN snuggery and deserves the eternal gratitude of the entire species for that profound wisdom.
So at least their "new policy" hasn't automatically obviated itself.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
By far the most cynical reaction to the Snowden has been these hypocritical righteous-victim attempts to claw for power. Usually there's a slightly thicker thread of logical consistency than in this case!
ftr I'm unimpressed by almost everything in this area: ICANN itself which is a greedy pit of smarmy politics spending most of its time fighting to stay relevant and encouraging lazy media to speculatively overestimate their role. The EU with its smug and nonsensical "right to be forgotten," attempts to treat Google search results as a public service, foot-dragging ineffective response to Microsoft's use of monopoly to bully the industry, and their member states' relative lack of contribution to the Internet compared to the US. And the US, which now feels as vindictive and arbitrary in punishing its own citizens, as militarily-aggressive, and as insecure and clueless and full of patriotic morons as China, except with a bigger military and a stronger propaganda machine.
The inventor of the computer is actually John Atanasoff: http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/?category=cmptr
He claimed, successfully, the title, but lost the war, as the idea was declared un-patentable.
But there's exactly jack and shit they can do if ICANN and the US tell them to fuck off.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The only reason why it's acceptable to allow ICANN to be controlled by the U.S. is because they have the strongest free speech laws. I simply don't trust other countries as much as the U.S. in that regard.
They might take ICANN's advice: And use a non-ICANN international internet naming system. ICANN would then be limited to the US's intranet, if that.
First Guy: Look, I made this incredible communication device!
Other Guys: Wow. Cool! Can we use it?
First Guy: Sure!
Other Guys: OK, but we own it now, OK?
First Guy: Uh......
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
If countries outside those borders don't like it, then they can ignore it.
Be careful what you wish for. There seems to be an increasing sentiment almost everywhere that the US is getting far too big for its boots and it is in the best interests of other nations to distance themselves and reduce their dependence on US-controlled interests.
To that end, it is certainly technically possible for an alternative internet to be developed that is independent of the US, and for all of the essential infrastructure to be distributed globally. In fact, for many reasons starting over and fixing some of the problems that were never anticipated decades ago would be a very good thing for almost everyone. But right now, the cost and administrative effort required to do so are prohibitive, and so the status quo remains.
If you push too hard and provide enough incentive for that decentralisation and replacement to actually start happening, there will be exactly one loser, and the economic cost alone would be devastating.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
What part of "we invented it and you hooked up to it to talk to us so you have to remain compatible to continue to do so" don't they get?
You are absolutely correct in asserting that there is fuck all the US can do. But the reason this is an issue is because they want to have more control but still talk to the US. The US has said "no" time and time again. So now the rest of the world to put up or shut up. The issue, I suspect, is that they don't want to give up all of those tasty, tasty US-based services.
Since names can be so political and controversial, I propose that we just simply use a numerical address. It could be broken up into a series of smaller numbers separated by a dash, or period perhaps, to make it easy to remember. You might be able to get away with a 32-bit number, but something in the 128-bit range might be better for future capacity.
Best of both worlds :)
The inventor of the computer is actually John Atanasoff: http://www.computerhistory.org...
He claimed, successfully, the title
Were those who awarded him the title aware of the Zuse Z3 (it's two items above the ABC item on the page whose URL you cited (note: HTML, despite being a British rather than an all-American invention, isn't that hard to use, and if you use it when posting to /., URLs automatically get turned into links you can click)? It, unlike the ABC, was programmable, although it wasn't stored-program (it was programmed with punched tape) and didn't have, for example, conditional branches.
Get you internet clearance before you surf or else.
EU hate the fact that the 'net is effectively owned by the USA (and this is an Aussie typing). The EU can't organise a decent chook raffle, so leave ICANN alone, it works so don't try to 'fix' it.
You want a signature? You can't handle a signature!!
I didn't say there were no reasons that it might be nice if ICANN was not under a US contract.
What I said was that there aren't any reasons for the US to go along with this plan. No national government is in the business of giving away power to other countries simply because those other countries want it.
They might take ICANN's advice: And use a non-ICANN international internet naming system. ICANN would then be limited to the US's intranet, if that.
Which they'd likely have LESS control over.
Meaning their "third option" is to spend out money they don't have already and don't really want to spend to build out a naming system themselves.
This is why they're making power grabs for ICANN. The work's already done, dusted and paid for. If they can steal^H^H^H^co-opt it, they don't have to do any real work or incur any real expenses themselves.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Firstly, I'm not "offended" that the EU would like control of the ICANN contract. I'm simply stating diplomatic realities that simply demanding something when you offer no good reason for the other party to comply is empty grandstanding.
What, specifically, has the US Dept. of Commerce made ICANN do that it would no longer do if it's contract was turned over to another political body? What problem, specifically, with the US owning the ICANN contract are you trying to solve?
And again, why would the US agree to this? All I see is a bunch of whining about how unfair the situation is. What I don't see are any credible threats or inducements for the US to go along. The EU would have just as much luck asking the Russians to pretty please hand over some natural gas for free because it's so unfair that Siberia has such rich petrochemcial resources and Europe does not.
Once there IS a credible counter-proposal, (i.e. "If the US maintains control of ICANN, we'll set up something different", or "If the US gives up control of ICANN, we'll give the US control of...") I imagine the US might come to the bargaining table. But simply complaining about the status quo changes nothing.
Also, ICANN is in bed with Verisign. Verisign is an American lackey and turned over its private keys to daddy, I mean the NSA.
Thanks to Russian leaks, we already know the answer: "fuck EU"
Agreed 100%
I don't care whoever out there in Asia/Europe bitching about this relationship. If you don't like it, don't use the internet... or create another internet of your own!!!
Daniel Webster was not Noah's brother; he was a distant relative of Noah. While he did campaign on behalf of Noah for an extension of copyright, he also campaigned for copyright laws back in the 1790s -- 15 years prior to Noah's creation of Webster's Dictionary. He proposed that the U.S. should adopt the same global standards of copyright proposed by the Statute of Anne as a matter of establishing intellectual security in the U.S. similar to that of other more established content-creating countries.
Copyright law existed prior to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution and even prior to the Continental Congress. It was Madison and Pinckney who pushed for the adoption of U.S. copyright law as a federal institution.
Copyright law in the U.S. was exceptionally weak up until World War II. Of the three colonial-era copyright bills passed, 2 of them called for seven-year terms and the other one for five. This was considerably weaker than existing U.K. copyright laws. The states eventually adopted the Statute of Anne standards, which was the 14-year global standard: also a U.K.-based legal standard. The 1790-era standard did not change until 1831, which was a result of Daniel's lobbying. The 28/14 year increase was nominal by comparison to what U.S. copyright law is today. The U.S. was also quickly outpaced by other countries in increasing copyright terms and protections. It wasn't until the Universal Copyright Convention in 1954 that the U.S. caught up to global standards, and even this adoption was an alternative to the stronger protections of the Berne Convention; U.S. copyright law was still less strict than most other major players in the world.
In fact, U.S. copyright law didn't really become ridiculous until the Copyright Act of 1976. Following this act we finally adopted the Berne convention.
So, no, we first got copyright law in the U.S. thanks to British common law, and then ratification in the U.S. constitution which was signed when Daniel Webster was 5 years old.
I am fairly certain the UN is the mechanism by which the antichrist will evolve. One world government, one world religion, the mark of the beast, I mean internation identification codes for each human...
The domain name system (DNS) is a shorthand for IP numbers. There are a few extensions like MX records to help mail find it's way, but the web is an application layer on top of IP and DNS.